The only real threat to eBay will be aging and dying off of America’s 74 million or so Baby Boomers (people aged 52 to 72). The Boomers are eBay’s main customers; their insatiable appetite for collectibles and kitsch drove its growth and recent profits. As the number of Boomers declines, eBay’s revenues and income are likely to fall.

One potential danger that eBay might face is a growing glut of collectibles and antiques on the market; as Boomers or their heirs sell and find no buyers. News articles indicate that Boomer’s kids; Generation X and Millennials, have little or no interest in a lot of their parents’ possessions.

In particular I think eBay is in a great position to go acquiring. There are some interesting potential acquisitions for it out there; including Etsy (NASDAQ: ETSY) which had a market cap of $1.876 billion on August 9, 2017. Another is Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) – the big O had a market capitalization of $456.26 million on August 9, 2017.

There is also one very ugly number in eBay’s financials and that’s cash from operations. Over the course of 2016 the amount of cash flowing through eBay’s till fell by $1.207 billion, and that occurred in eBay’s first year without PayPal.

eBay reported $4.033 in cash from operations at the end of fourth quarter 2015, and $2.826 billion in cash from operations on December 31, 2016. This is worrisome because all the additional revenue growth does not seem to be translating into additional cash.

These are the earnings reports to watch because they will show us what to expect from the entire sector. Massive growth in Amazon’s revenues will indicate that the pain and disruption in brick and mortar retail is far from. Continued revenue growth at PayPal and Facebook will demonstrate that fintech and social media can still pay off.

Such numbers might be fine for a pre-IPO unicorn, but they’re horrible for a publically traded company. To me at least Etsy looks like a circa 1999 dot.com company that is ready to go crash. All it would take is one negative earnings report or some really bad news to send Etsy spinning into the death spiral.

Naturally this piques the interest of value investors, if eBay is an unfashionable company that makes money; it meets some classic Ben Graham criteria for a value bargain. That means we will need to ask the all-important question here: is eBay making money?